Arrival: Chapter 37

  “Alright Bridge, we’re ready down here.  Go ahead and de-pressurize.”

  “VEEEERRRPP!!   VEEEERRRPP!!  VEEEERRRPP!!” sounded the alarm as the entire section’s atmosphere was reabsorbed into the ship’s reservoirs.  Earlier space ships might have merely vented air out to space in order to depressurize, but New Horizon could afford no such wastefulness.   They only had enough reserve gasses to completely re-atmosphere the ship a few times over in the event of catastrophe, but had so far been fortunate enough to never need to dip into the backup reserves.  In situations such as this where for whatever reason a section of the ship needed to be depressurized, most of the atmosphere could be captured back into storage for reuse instead of wastefully venting it out into the vacuum which the ship sailed through.

  Wiremu could tell that they were increasingly in vacuum by the gradual quieting of the alarm, which continued until he couldn’t hear it anymore.  Without any significant air left to transmit the sounds of the siren through his space suit, the flashing yellow warning lights were the only observable indications of the danger.  Although as a simulant it was technically possible for Wiremu to operate in a vacuum, to preserve his simulation as a human he was programmed to simulate death if he ever encountered the situation, but unlike a real human he could then be revived if returned to normal atmospheric conditions.   It was kind of cheating, but no feature of simulation authenticity was ever thought important enough to permanently damage or disable a simulant.  They were instead only incapacitated, and remained inactive until revived again under proper conditions.  In any case, a pressurized helmet made it much easier for him to communicate while he worked, since either way he’d be unable to be heard speaking without air to transmit the sound vibrations of his voice. 

  The suit was contemporary technology when they left Earth; it was form fitting and relied on mechanical elastic force to maintain pressure on the skin against a vacuum.   The helmet was likewise narrow and compact with a forward facing window in front of one’s face, and was equipped with a heads up display like in the front windows of the shuttles.   Breathable air was provided to the wearer by a backpack air tank, and a tight magnetic seal kept the helmet airtight against the fabric of the suit.  The design allowed far greater mobility than the personal spaceship suits which had been used exclusively in the early days of human spaceflight.   Both varieties of suits still had their own strengths and weaknesses though, and as such several of each kind were kept in storage on the ship.  Since they were staying inside and would only need them for a short amount of time though, they’d opted for the suits which were easier to get around in once they’d struggled into the tight garments in the first place.  

  “Alright, we’re good to go,” Wiremu said to Armina.  “Hand me the drill would you?”  The two had volunteered to fix the shuttle hatch which Halley had damaged when he’d cut through it to gain access to the ship.  With its airlock damaged, the shuttle’s air was sucked out along with the rest of the section, which was a necessary step either way for the work that needed to be done.

  The original Wiremu had had a great many hours in space suits over his career, all of which the simulant Wiremu could remember and draw on as experience.  He hadn’t volunteer for the task as much as he’d just assumed that he’d be the one doing the job.  Armina however, had volunteered for her very first spacesuit operation in part because she’d always been curious to do so but had never had a good enough reason, but also because it was an excuse to spend some more time with Wiremu.

  Although when they’d first woken up she’d found herself immediately attracted to the Neil Sagan simulant, ever since their ascent back to the ship to stop Halley and bring everything back under control, she’d found herself increasingly interested in Wiremu instead.  Neil was a lot of fun and she still enjoyed his company immensely, but that seemed to be as far as her emotions ever became invested in him.  

  Wiremu was different though; he was a warrior like her.  They had much more in common, and they got each other in that effortless kind of way which was hard to come by.  Although no formal overtures had been made or anyone’s intentions openly declared, they’d been spending more and more time together.  Armina was finding as many reasons to be around him as possible, which is why she’d immediately volunteered for this task when the opportunity arose.

  “Shostak?” he had to ask again over the helmet to helmet comm channel.

  “Oh yes, sorry… here you go,” she said with a little embarrassment as she handed him the tool.  Instead of the messy operation it would have been to try to repair the mechanism within the door and then weld over the hole in the hatch in a zero gravity vacuum, they instead just fabricated an entire new hatch assembly.  It wasn’t hard, and most of the raw materials involved would be replenished anyways when they recycled the damaged assembly back down into its base elements.  

  Every single component from the large metal hatch casing itself, to all of the locking mechanisms within it, and all of the internal electronics which made it go, were all individually manufactured in the ship’s industrial printers, and then hand assembled by a technician.  As a result, all Wiremu and Armina had to do now was just swap one unit for another.

  Bracing himself against the wall to avoid his body spinning around due to the rotational forces of the drill instead of the bolts he was trying to undo, one by one Wiremu undid all of the bolts which held the bulky hatch in place.  He painstakingly placed each bolt into the mesh bag he’d magnetically attached to the adjacent bulkhead in order to prevent them from floating away, and so he could re-use them again when he went to install the new hatch.

  “Have you heard about their baby farm idea?” Armina casually asked him.

  “Sure, yeah I heard.  Sounds a little morbid but it’s a good idea if we’re still going to pull the mission off in any kind of meaningful way.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking…” she agreed.  Some time passed as he worked before she spoke up again.  “You know… they’ll be expecting me to um… you know, to be a mom.  I’ll need to adopt some of the existing children who’ve been orphaned as well as some of the new ones they make… and birth a few of my own.”

  Wiremu stopped working for a moment and turned to face her.  “How do you feel about that?”  He asked himself if she seemed the mom type and without further consideration he honestly couldn’t say either way.

  “Well, I always knew the day would come and I certainly did always look forward to it in principle, it’s just… it’s just a lot more to take on than I had in mind, you know?  I always thought it would be just the having a couple kids myself part…  Although it’s certainly better than the alternative of being one of the ones stuck up here on the ship nursing the infants I think.”

  “Right,” Wiremu affirmed as he returned to his work.  He decided that he thought she would in fact be a good mom.  She could be tough, but not recklessly or unnecessarily so, and he felt that perfectly appropriate.  It’s how he perceived his own mother to have raised him himself, and he figured he turned out okay.

  He undid the last bolt, methodically placed it in the mesh bag, and then pulled on its drawstring to close it.  He then pulled the entire hatch off of its hinged bases.  “It’s almost too bad the shuttle’s still mounted here,” Wiremu commented.  “Otherwise we’d sure have a great view…”  He attached one side of a large two sided magnet onto the damaged hatch, and then attached the other side to the wall safely out of the way a few meters back down the access tube.  He then grabbed the new hatch and set about seating it into place where the old one had been. 

  “Wii, did the original you have any kids back on Earth?” Armina asked.

  “Oh no, no, no….  None of us four did.”  Again he stopped working to turn back around to face her.  Wearing the space suit didn’t accommodate casually looking back over his shoulder at her; it required turning his entire body around to do so.   “Now that I think about it… I wonder if that was part of the problem in the first place.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Our oversights in setting up the mission… we were all hyper-ambitious overachievers without any children.  Maybe that was why we so utterly failed to think about how growing up on the ship would affect children the way it did, and the adults those children grew up into.   Maybe it was because none of us were parents, that there were a number of things we never thought about that we really probably should‘ve.”  He shrugged, and turned back around to his work.  After properly seating the new hatch in place, he re-opened his bolt bag and began fishing them out and drilling them back into place again, one by one.

  “Now that you bring it up, I did look into what descendants I had here on the ship.   All of our genomes were used for breeding once we were underway.  It turns out that the real me had a son and grandson, and that his grandson actually grew up to replace him as captain.  He died though… in fact right in the middle of the Midway incident while saving one of the clones.” he recalled with a raised eyebrow.

  “That sounds like you,” Armina warmly offered.  He didn’t turn around to let her see, but her comment made him smile.   “Yes I’d heard about Anaru Tynes’ sacrifice…” she added.

  “He died without having had his replacement child, and after that it doesn’t look like anybody ever used my genome again.”  A few moments of silence passed before he spoke up again.  “You know, I always did have a vision in my head of having children someday though…  I had a great childhood Armina, our house backed onto the woods and more than anything I loved going out to explore them alone with my dog…  It’s what ultimately made me want to be a space explorer.  I’m not surprised that the other Wiremu had a family once the ship was underway and he finally had the chance.”

  “What’s a dog?” Armina asked after a pause.

  “A pet, a wonderful loyal pet… four legs, furry, panting at your knee... terrific.” 

  “Oh right.”   Now she vaguely remembered hearing about such a thing.  “You know... I think you’d make a wonderful father Wii,” Armina sincerely offered.

  “Thank you my dear, but unfortunately I’m not really constituted for anything like that anymore,” he surmised.

  It took Armina some time to work up the courage to make the suggestion which was on her mind.  “You know…” she offered, “your genome is certainly still on file.  It’s not too late to do it all over again.”  The simulated man stopped working again to turn around and scrutinize her.  “Down there on the planet there’ll be plenty of space to build a house which backs onto the jungle…  We could even make a dog for you and the kids if you really wanted one!” she nervously laughed.

  Wiremu smiled in a way that seemed to signify pleasant surprise.  “But I’m ancient!” he exclaimed with laughter.  He laughed because he’d only meant the age he was constructed to appear, but he remembered as he was saying it that technically he was actually much older than he’d even meant.  Strictly speaking, he was also the additional hundred and sixty years he’d been in storage as well.  “And you’re so young,” he concluded.  Whether he was nearing two hundred years old or only a few weeks old, the age he was built to simulate had nearly thirty years on the young woman who seemed to be propositioning him. 

  “I’ll catch up with you,” she pointed out.

  “You’ll pass me,” he furthered.

  “Well that’d really be more your problem than mine wouldn’t it?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well if you survive, then on my deathbed you’ll appear to me then as you do today.  You’re the one who’d have to watch me grow old and die.  You’d have to watch our children die, maybe even our grandchildren and great grandchildren, and beyond…   But you’d also get to see them all grow up and live.  I guess it’d be a blessing and a curse.”

  “Oh Armina…” he teased, “why can’t you just find yourself a nice human boy?”

  “Wii…” she sighed, “I already know all the boys, and none of them have ever interested me.  I was so intrigued by you sims in part because you were the first new men I’d ever met!  You’re interesting, you’re… you’re unique.  Life with you would be… a road less traveled.  Life on the planet will be an adventure either way sure, but… it’s a particularly special adventure for you because you were around from the very beginning.  For us this will all just be our new lives, our… just our new existence.  For you it’ll always be about something much bigger though, about something much grander… I want to be a part of that.  I want that added dimension to my life; I want to share the adventure with you and… and see it through your eyes.”

  Although he was smiling, Wiremu didn’t say anything.  Instead he turned around and finished screwing in the few remaining bolts.   When he was finished he handed the drill back to Armina and closed the hatch.  “Bridge, try the lock.”  Before they’d come down to replace the hatch, another technician had already been by to repair the mechanism which allowed the hatch to be operated by remote control, the system which Neil had disabled during the height of the troubles.

  Wiremu held his hand to the door to feel for the vibrations which indicated mechanisms within the hatch to be operating, since he was still unable to directly hear anything in the vacuum.  When he felt the activity cease, he heard the bridge report through his helmet that it seemed to be operating correctly.  “Alright, then let’s test the seal.  Go ahead and disengage the shuttle.  Hold it steady just a few meters off of the ship, and try re-pressurizing this section.   Go slowly though, if there’s a problem we want to lose as little air as possible.”

  “Understood.”   After a few moments both of them heard the bridge sound off the pressure even though their helmet’s HUDs displayed it for them at the same time.  “… twenty percent…  …thirty percent…”  Wiremu began to be able to hear the sirens again through his helmet.  “…fifty percent, everything’s looking good…   …sixty percent…”

  Once the atmosphere had been brought back up to a hundred percent with what as far as any readings could tell was a perfect seal, Wiremu confidently removed his helmet with satisfaction.  The sirens and flashing lights had shut off completely now that the atmosphere in the section was completely restored.  “Alright Bridge, re-dock the shuttle and pressurize it.  Let me know when I can try the hatch.”

  “Understood.”

  “Armina?” Wiremu asked as he turned back around to face her again.  She seemed nervous after having been left hanging over her proposition, but she looked back up at him in response.  “How bout you buy me dinner first?” he suggested with a chuckle.